A Few Tools for a Full Life in the New Year

The Christmas tree is looking a bit bereft; the prime rib bones are gnawed and in the trash and the leftover cookies are to go into the freezer. I am, probably like you, breathing a sigh of relief mixed with sweet memories that another Christmas has come and gone. Many of us who live with various forms of disability are recovering from too much food, too much activity and much too much yuletide and festooning. As usual I have misplaced a gift I bought for someone else (happens every year) and like many of you, are wondering where the energy will emerge to face the coming year. I know it will. It’s often difficult to see the tomorrows when today we are so fatigued but I have lived long enough to know, it happens. Tomorrow will arrive so ready or not, here it comes.

I love the way life has of renewing us if we just keep moving forward and believe. I would like to share with you a few tools I find helpful as another year approaches. They are as follows:

1. Discover your own mixture of rest and activity. We can’t rest all the time or we’d stink, we’d turn into fat blobs of flesh and we’d run out of food. The personal hygiene issues, well, they’re just too disgusting to talk about. We each have the projects and demands of daily life dragging us forward and that doesn’t have to be a bad thing. That trip to the market can be mixed with exercise to strengthen our aching bodies if we park a bit further from the entrance and load our own groceries into the car. Be sure to tell the checker to keep them light. It’s a concept that isn’t always understood I’m afraid. When we get home and face the task of a cluttered house we can parcel out the chores in short increments of time and get a great deal more accomplished that way. When cleaning counters, scrubbing pans or dusting, I often think of the Karate Kid and his “wax on, wax off” routine and use the other arm as well as the dominant one. So your home isn’t as clean as your mother would like…let it go a bit.

2. Set aside some time each day to do something you love. The choices are extensive and always rewarding. It doesn’t really matter if you’re good at it or not; it’s the act of doing that holds the joy. Surely you can find something. Watching a good film, making a quilt, carving a piece of wood, or painting a picture. It has to be something you completely enjoy and shouldn’t be useful, just pleasurable.

3. Let us all try to banish worry this year. This is a difficult one, I know, but worry doesn’t change the situation, it only changes you. It saps our strength, raises our blood pressure, causes us to secrete an unhealthy level of stomach acid and robs your life of valuable time. No great feat of accomplishment was ever attained by worry and fear. No great art work was ever painted by fear. No great love match was ever united and fulfilled by fear. Worry and guilt are the two most useless emotions we each carry with us and like tiny germs, waiting to come to the surface; they should remain in their place.

Look at that which you fear with a cool head and clear thoughts. Think what can you do about it? Then, do it. Be logical and don’t obsess about it. So often worry moves into our minds and fills our waking hours with its dominant thoughts. You must put it aside. Just shove it out of your mind and get busy with something else in order to banish it. You may have to do this often. Do it as often as possible. Occasionally that means picking up an enriching book or even leaving the house, calling a friend or becoming occupied with some activity at home.

Many of us use prayer and pass our fears and worries into God’s huge hands. If you don’t believe, then leave it to the fairies, the Source, the ether or just the universe. Don’t carry the weight of the world around. None of us are up to that and it is for naught.

4. Be proud of yourself. I know, I know, we’re supposed to be humble, etc. I think far too few of us under value ourselves and we need to find who we truly are. What is your destiny in this world? What is your value? You have to have value and recognize it for yourself before you can expect others to value you. It’s difficult to accomplish this if you are living your life without personal dignity. Dignity and honor are the springboards for the way we treat others and go about this business of living, compromised in health or not. This may mean you have to stop lying to yourself over those extra pain pills, that extra bottle of wine, that lie you told someone just to get rid of them or whatever act you performed which you knew was wrong. Forgive yourself and move on. Respect yourself and the rest of the world will.

5. Accept your limitations but don’t allow them to fence you in. I recently read in the newest issue of GUIDEPOSTS magazine, a quote I would like to share with you from Olympic sprinter Oscar Pistorius. “My mother used to tell us, Carl, put on your shoes; Oscar, put on your prosthetic legs.’ So I grew up not thinking I had a disability. I grew up thinking I had different shoes.” You see Oscar is a double amputee.

Here’s wishing each of you a year of finding medical answers, comfort, cures, adjustments but most of all happiness in whatever your state of life or health. Life is still wonderful. Don’t miss a moment of it.

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Sue Falkner-Wood

Sue Falkner-Wood is a retired registered nurse living in Astoria, Ore., with her husband, who is also an R.N. Sue left nursing in 1990 due to chronic pain and other symptoms related to what was eventually...read more